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Thursday August 2, 2012 - Volume
3, Number 4 © Copyright 2012, The Ultrapolis
Project – All Rights Reserved. |
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A PRO-CORPORATE CANDIDATE
CANNOT WIN IN NOVEMBER
Obama Will Have the Latitude to Engage His Opponent on Obama’s Terms One year ago from this July 21, I posted on Facebook a
‘note’ titled “Observations
from Shanghai: The Republicans Will Not Save Us,” which was later
published on this website thru the UWFR January 25, 2012 issue. In that same issue UWFR also repeated out
its prediction for the electoral result awaiting us this November. This last week there were several
developments in the presidential election campaigns that once again not only
illustrated the almost willful ideological blindness of the Republican Party
and its most ardent supporters, but actually reinforced it. -Marco Antonio Roberts, Editor |
Chick Fil A:
G/BLT Influence on the Menu
Customer Choice Will Cause Gay Marriage Setback
The latest dust up
over gay marriage will not deliver the expected gains for the GBLT
movement. Instead, it is exposing the fallibility
of polls, and the reality that most Americans are not yet strongly supportive,
rightly or wrongly, of this radical re-definition of marriage. (For our
position, please see A
Gay Defense of Traditional Marriage). The idea for a gay
kissathon protest tomorrow is particularly bad as it will not be
well-received by middle-of-the-road folks, and will make gay marriage support
appear small in comparison to the massive outpouring of support for Chick Fil
A. GBLT folks make a small percentage
of the population, and most supportive straight folks are not likely to join
a gay kissathon. We question whether
even most gay people would. Chick Fil A was an
especially poorly chosen target for the GBLT activists. This company has a strong reputation for
ethical treatment of employees, charity support, and is known to forego
hundreds of millions in profits in the name of principle – something
remarkable in today’s highly competitive marketplace where corporations
routinely use “maximizing profit” as the justification for everything they
do, regardless of consequences to employees, communities, and country. Lastly, Americans
generally don’t take well to calls for boycotts. Except for extreme cases of abuse or
outrageous actions, Americans typically bristle at being told what to buy or
not to buy, and so boycotts don’t usually work. |
CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE! WILL FAIL
Line of Argument Sign of
Republican/Romney Tin Ear “Corporations Are People” Argument
is Lippy, Reactionary On July 15, the
editorial page of the Wall Street Journal featured a column titled by the
former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, and his wife Suzy, “It's
True: Corporations Are People.” The column had the added cheeky subtitle
“What else could they be? Buildings don't hire people. Buildings don't design
cars that run on electricity or discover drug therapies to defeat
cancer.” (Perhaps we could say that
cars are people. After all, cars don’t
drive themselves to places, or change their oil.) Befitting the stereotype of a likely author,
Jack Welch has been criticized for what his detractors call his lack of
compassion for the middle and low level employees at his companies, and for
his expressed sentiment that the growing disparity between executive pay and
everyone else’s is not his concern. In that context, the column would seem
true to character, and perhaps should have been titled “It’s True: Jack Welch
and His Wife Are Avaricious Asses.” The column’s
disingenuous title, and the lippy tone of its subtitle, aptly summarized its
contents: a cynically and intellectually insulting game of semantics. Of course corporations “are,” or are not,
"people" depending on the context.
But, if they "are people," then they are in the same way all
organizations - be they a crime mob, a government, a charity, a church, or
even the Nazi Gestapo - "are people." Organizations are vehicles
for human action. So this argument is
pointless, except as a charade meant to divert attention from the real
question: what political rights should corporations have? Obviously, we don’t give crime mobs the
same rights or benefits as churches, or view them with as morally equivalent
because they 'are people.' One would
expect such a crude and ridiculous staunchly ideological argument fostered by
the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and perhaps some Libertarians.
It is disheartening to see it propagated on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. But, the WSJ is on a tear these days, as is most of fiscal
conservativedom, as its evermore ideological inhabitants rally against the
evermore ideological assailants of capitalism. In the following
Monday’s WSJ’s editorial pages we
found another similarly shallow argumentation of fiscal conservative
platitudes, this one on how the rich pay more than “their fare share” of
taxes, headlined “The
Latest News on Tax Fairness” by Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for
President Bush I, with the subtitle: “A new Congressional Budget Office
reports shows the share of taxes paid by the top 20% has gone up over the
last 30 years, while the share of taxes paid by everyone else has gone down,”
which tells you all you need to know to know there are no new arguments
here. This has been argued for the
last twenty years, each time as if some new revelation is being brought to
the attention to the public. Yes, the
argument is pointlessly true, just
as it is also pointlessly true what liberals have equally disingenuously
counter-argued: that tax cuts benefit the wealthy. These arguments both are like saying that
you get more water out of a cup that has more water in it. (See more on
this point below.) Hardened Arguments Will Fail in the
Center |
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However, though not a scientific survey, it
was interesting and somewhat telling to see that most WSJ readers, not a socialist liberal lot, who replied to the
Welch column, did not buy it.
Corporations are amoral, but can be very powerful. And, as we have seen thru so many public
examples (the Glaxo SmithKline scandal most recently), as well as in the
direct experience of those of us who work for them, the profit motive can
often lead to the economic, and sometimes even physical destruction of many
lives, especially when millions or billions are involved, and when the profit
drive is unchecked by strong moral codes or effective laws. Most folks near the middle know the truth
is a mix. And most realize that all
power, corporate or governmental, needs to be kept in check. The reality is that activist conservatives
and liberals that are moving further and further to opposite sides of the
political spectrum don’t see that this is not expanding their appeal to new
converts. Instead, we have a growing
middle that sees less and less relevance from the dominant two political
ideologies for solutions to problems in their own lives. Grass-roots efforts are becoming more
strident in their views, and more defensive of all the implications of their
ideologies (e.g., the irony of Christian conservatives saying “greed is
good,” or aging hippies preaching “government always knows best”), while
establishment types pay lip service to them.
The reason for the David Dewhurst’s recent defeat at the hands of the
anti-establishment candidate Ted Cruz for the Republican nomination for the
Texas U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison was
at its core, a frustration with that lip service. Obama Will Take the
Center In the end, it is our assessment that the
Republicans will lose in this presidential race because, as much as people
are losing confidence in President Barak Obama’s administration, the middle
part of the electorate that decides elections is not seeing in the
Republicans a coherent response, and are not going to be convinced by the pro-unfettered
corporation rhetoric. Moreover, as
Governor Mitt Romney continues to have to shore up the conservative side of
his electoral base, he will not be able to run to the middle as is a must in
these elections. The Tea Party will
see to that. Today’s polls aside, once
the debates begin, President Obama will have the latitude to argue from the
center. In short, Governor Romney
cannot win a national debate with the core idea that unrestrained corporate
power is all good – not when even moderate Republicans and independents can
see their jobs being outsourced abroad while CEO pay again surges even as
corporations benefit from government handouts. But, if Romney tries to move away from that
position, his loudest defenders will abandon him. The Tea Party is not to be faulted. It is raising legitimate issues. It is the flip-side of Occupy Wall
Street. For all their ideological
differences, these two movements are both reactionary and ideologically
defensive, but also a result of political frustration that has grown beyond
the norm. And both are a revolt
against the crony corporate capitalism that has been entrenched and protected
thru government by our legislators (the conservative revolt, of course, is
better organized). Unfortunately,
instead of magnifying their influence where they agree, they have divided the
opposition to crony corporate powerbrokers that explicitly tell us that moral
or national welfare concerns are not their problem. (Prediction: The Tea Party influence will grow within
the Republican Party, but the party itself will weaken). We said last year the Republicans have no
answers (See Observations
from Shanghai: The Republicans Will
Not Save Us). They are simply
offering going back to what got us here in the first place. Most people can sense that. And if they don’t fully see that now, Mr.
Obama will make sure they do by November.
This is not a vindication of President Obama. It is an indictment of a sclerotic
political system that can no longer advance progress. About Taxes & the Rich: It’s All
True – And Pointless Here are some basics on taxes that
are always true (except under the most unlikely, regressive tax system). The Rich Pay a Larger Share
of Taxes Today for a Very Good Reason The rich pay a larger share of taxes today
because they are richer today – that is, they get a larger share of the
economic pie than they did before (most of you and I get proportionately less
for the same amount of work than we did before). To answer Mr. Fleischer and all other
conservatives who bring this up as some sort of proof of just how more burdened the rich are with
taxes: Nonsense. To complain about how the rich have been
taxed the last ten years is astonishingly, self-servingly myopic. Of
course the share of income taxes paid by the wealthiest will go up when
their share of income goes up, even with the Bush tax cuts. If a CEO gives himself a pay raise while he
outsources everyone else’s job to low-paid workers in Third World countries,
yes – his share of income taxes goes up while everyone else’s’ goes down. For
the CEO class to then moan that this is unfair is nothing short of intense,
cynical or solipsistic greed.
Furthermore, what these arguments never take into account is the real,
effective tax rate that we all pay to cover all government expenditures. We all pay a flat tax rate in Social
Security and Medicare taxes, and this tax rate is actually harshly
regressive, where the lowest-paid workers actually pay a higher percentage of
their total earnings than the wealthy.
As for the argument that we shouldn’t count these taxes because they
go into a ‘lockbox’ where it is saved for the retirement of those paying
those taxes, this is an accounting fiction.
The fact is all these taxes are used to pay the same things that
income taxes pay. There is no trust
fund, and the Social Security and Medicare taxes paid are not assigned to
anyone’s individual account. At
anytime the government can change or abolish whatever benefits anyone is
entitled to, the same was as any other government benefit, like welfare, food
stamps, or even roads. So, when you
consider those taxes, working class actually pays a much higher rate. And if you take it a step further, and
account for the wages not paid to employees because employers must take those
dollars in taxes on behalf of those employees (taxes they do not have to pay
for most of CEO compensation), the real effective tax rate for the lower and
middle class wage earners begins to approach 50%. The Rich Benefit More
From Tax Cuts for a Very Good Reason Tax cuts benefit the wealthy
disproportionately because they pay more tax in the first place. To answer liberals who make this counter
claim, any proportioned tax cut of tax rates will always benefit the rich
more, if we are talking about absolute dollars. It is preposterous to object to tax cuts on
that basis. If a CEO is paying $100,000.00
in taxes, while one of his employees is paying $5,000.00, obviously an even
cut on the tax rates will give many more dollars back to the CEO. About the only way to prevent that is to do
something like what President Obama is proposing, which is to cut off tax
cuts at incomes above $250,000 a year (even in the president’s plan, the rich
will get a more dollars back in their pocket). This may be acceptable policy under
specific circumstances, but it makes no sense to say that you can only raise
tax rates on the rich and then you can never lower them again since they
benefit disproportionately from tax rate reductions. Ultrapolis Town Hall Meetings Coming
in September First Topic: The Truth
About the Growing Wage Gap Between the Rich and the Middle Class The
first week of September we will host a “town hall” event that will invite
attendees to participate in a discussion on the reported decline in the
middle class share of the national income, during the same period in which
those at the top of the economic ladder have increased their share. The event will include an opening
presentation to set the stage for the discussion, a moderated open discussion
on the topic, and a vote on options for a solution, with the opportunity to
send a joint message to our elected representatives. The results of the
discussion and vote will be reported in the UWFR. The event will have a social framework to
promote respectful and friendly discussion and exchange of ideas, and perhaps
the chance to meet new like-minded friends. If
you would like more information, please write to contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com,
or contact Marco Antonio Roberts directly. Main Index of the Ultrapolis World
Forecast & Review Comments
may be directed to contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com, or if you receive
the newsletter email, via a reply to the email address from which you receive
it. © Copyright 2012, The Ultrapolis Project –
All Rights Reserved.
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